Maybe I am wrong but how is this adult?? Is there even nudity in it like to-love ru darkness? Just seems more like the norm with the mysterious magic fog. Also is there blood?

Might seem ridiculous but really want to know.

Adult is mostly the sex tag, so the book would need to focus on nudity/sex. Just google with the OG title 魔技科の剣士と召喚魔王 and you will immediately see that the collected volumes have restored nudity (one of the oldest sales tactics with softcore porn manga), unlike the scanlation that followed the magazine raws. Here is a barely censored teen vagina for example and 95% of all manga with fog censorship do the same with their tankōbon. Always assume that the genre box applies to the final release with this kind of book.

The To Love-Ru: Darkness comparison (locked in with adult) this makes perfect sense.

________________
I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Wouldn't the "ecchi" tag pretty much tell you the same thing? Also, on top of that, why is there an "Adult" category, a "Mature" category, and a "Smut" category? There isn't that much of a difference between, as far as I know.

________________

Smut is for girls and ecchi is for boys. Don´t mix these with the wrong genders while tagging and you are golden. Easy.

I agree that this is a form of ecchi manga, yet it's also worthy of the adult on top. The LNs turn into basically literotica later on too, from what I quickly sampled to get my facts in order. Just view adult as "NC-17" and mature as "Rated R", or whatever. Meaning that these tags are age gates and not genres. Just as with films and games. The difference if one is edgier that the other isn´t important. Adult stands for sexual content with a possible dish of gore, drugs, extreme horror, rape, etc. Mature is for the other stuff (unless the rape is used as fanservice) with a dash of graphic sexual content. A manga can also get both if sex and violence are displayed equally with no clear winner. Gantz comes to mind. Or all the locked in Champion Red stuff...

The locked Nana is a good case for mature as the on-screen sex and nudity are within reason. The (child)prostitution and drug/suicide subplots stick out more. Saru Lock has strong violence and drugs but it´s the near-pornographic sexual content that sticks out. A clear case of just adult to me and the demographic box never changed in years.

Whatever, just "age gate" an entry with one of the 2 if not sure or ask. Senran Kagura games get a 17+ in the US (this is a US site) and one even failed to get an 18+ here in Germany as it was viewed as bordering on child pornography, despite our extremely lax laws on sexual content in media otherwise. Those games don´t have ANY real nudity or sex yet the necessary (government) institutions saw fit to save the children from those worldwide.

Our manga and certainly LN in question certainly went further in terms of content. Let´s move on, mkay. Posting one (underage) vag pic per day was enough for me. We don´t need to restart the Clinton debate if the (graphics) blowjob descriptions from the LNs are sexual acts or not.


Edit: Let´s throw it all in while we are talking about sex tags.
Hentai is a demographic and not a barometer if the sex scenes are graphic enough to apply that tag. Out of control sexual content in a Seinen magazine doesn´t justify to hand out hentai, the entry should still just have Seinen + Adult. A hentai manga with fully blurred genitalia (the Vitamin entries come to mind) is also fully worthy of its hentai tag.
And that´s all I can come up with when it comes to MU´s sexual content tags.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 11:05 pm, Sep 18 2018

________________
I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

The Adult tag probably comes from what will happen later in the story if the manga follows the same story as the light novel source because in the latter novels towards the end the MC with the girls in his harem do actually do 18+ stuff 😉 🙄